Nike and Adidas Duke it Out Digitally

There is little correlation between World Cup sponsorship and social media success for the 2014 games, according to Opher Kahane, CEO and co-founder of Origami Logic, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company that specializes in market intelligence.

So what does this mean for World Cup sponsor Adidas? The Herzogenaurach, Germany-based brand, which doesn’t appear to be sponsoring or promoting posts on Facebook, has a “limited overall reach,” Kahane said, but retains relatively stable engagement thanks to a high like-and-share ratio on Mark Zuckerberg’s networking site.

Meanwhile, Nike, based in Beaverton, Ore., has gone on the offensive, sponsoring posts that appear in its followers’ news feeds. These posts generate more conversations overall across Facebook and Twitter.

By focusing on its key roster of players, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Nike took a creative approach with short and flashy — and sometimes humorous — videos on YouTube, upping its number of likes and comments 10 and seven times, respectively.

Current follower count across social platforms also has an obvious impact on results, due to larger audience reach. Nike maintains four times the number of followers on YouTube as Adidas and also counts larger followings on both Facebook and Twitter.